


Siren Songs From Untraveled Seas

by HalfshellVenus



Category: Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock - T. S. Eliot
Genre: Poetry, Yuletide, Yuletide 2012, Yuletide Madness, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-22
Updated: 2012-12-22
Packaged: 2017-11-22 00:06:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/603565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HalfshellVenus/pseuds/HalfshellVenus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And indeed there will be time…</p>
            </blockquote>





	Siren Songs From Untraveled Seas

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PteranodonSays](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PteranodonSays/gifts).



> A Yuletide Madness extra for the prompt of, "Does he ever dare?" This was quite a challenge, but the idea was irresistible.

~*~*~*~*~

In the twilight of my own time  
I venture forth from the suffocations of my Chesterfield.  
Out into the streets I blunder, throwing caution asunder,  
As the bleak municipal lamps of urban promise  
Glow in a ghostly mockery of rarified life.

There, along the high road, I once chased hope—  
Ran behind its unsteady course and sought to claim it,  
Trap it soundly in the butterfly-net of loose ambition.  
Tomorrow would come, it always comes,  
And the words put down on pages fly their cages  
While the sun burns the last lost boat from the horizon  
And the waves foam like unfashionable lace  
Billowing at the bosom of an aging vicar's wife.

I remember the blood-red victory parade roses  
Clustered against the coffins of the fallen dead.

The moon edges out from behind the clouds  
Over the avenue where I abandoned my youth.  
Apart from the themes of turnstile dreams  
And quick-footed commerce, I had no notion  
Of the larger world of businessmen and bartenders,  
Nor the galleries of splintered _objets d'art_  
We would haunt in the belief that beauty still survived.

In the lightboxes of the soul,  
Lie needful things all men should know. 

Under the benediction of that golden gleam—  
The moon's forgiveness for our hurried, haggard ways—  
I see a woman once called Charlotte.  
She will not notice me,  
With my ancient skin withered apple-brown  
And my wistful remnants of hair.  
She was always a willow waiting to dance,  
While I but rued my albatross grace.

In the passage under the stairs,  
Others kept secrets I alone would never share.

My name rises like a whisper of smoke  
Aloft on the drifting air (the soft, misted air).  
I stand duly dumb,  
Frozen in the lifelong habit of "Not me" (never _me_ )  
And certain time will unstick my ears and speak the truth.  
I have listened long enough to odes for other men  
While the meager poetry of limerick defines my fate.

I am the unbought rummage-sale painting,  
never more than trash-heap bound.

Again I hear the sound, the syllables I own,  
And Charlotte steps toward me as if I exist  
(no mere myth). I smell the faintest hint of perfume.  
"Charlotte, isn't it?" I say, with the false smoothness  
Of one who could easily afford to forget.  
"Is it you?" she asks, though who have I ever been  
And what witnesses would remember?

We talk of acquaintances—Oh, lecture me not  
Over substance and philosophies,  
When the world is already dying!  
I invite her to drinks at the Blue Café,  
And we sit with the clank of dishes  
Hovering close like unwanted relatives.

Outside the motorcars rumble to and fro,  
Carrying their passengers to where they must go.

Here at a corner table, the candlelight tilts upward  
To leave the soup-spattered tablecloth half-hidden.  
We revisit the years that fell behind us,  
My name uncurling from her tongue like a royal presentation,  
No hesitation or sense of its bitter, pitiful past.  
It was once accursed, afflicted with dull disregard  
And offering only the cruel fruit of fractured laughter.

In the cobwebbed rafters of a history bereft of indiscretion,  
I had schemed for just this moment  
Before I realized it would never come.  
Now the wondrous wreckage of those plans lies fallow,  
Earthbound against the airy thrill of the gossamer tendrils  
At the nape of Charlotte's neck, the level beauty of her eyes  
As she overlooks the worn elbows of my jacket.

I have known the despair of fleeting faith, known it better  
Than all the false minutes of misconceived _Maybes_  
That sank like shipboard burial stones to the bottom of the sea.

I should have learned the art of cavalier courtship  
Instead of clinging to the rude scraps lovers tossed beneath my feet.

But I am not so old as I once believed, nor so terrible,  
And the Universe ticks onward despite my scratching at its door.  
I bid Charlotte to my rooms, games of chance or even romance  
Equally welcome in the mystery that is finally ready to unfold.

We walk out into the evening, her hand upon my arm  
(Be silent, tremor!), until our leisured steps at last approach my gate.  
Charlotte turns as I hold it open, words unspoken.  
The _pas de deux_ progresses with natural agility,  
Her smile guiding us onward toward my doorstep  
Ahead of the actual ascension of light.

 

_\------ fin ------_


End file.
